3 Things Every Leader Must Do

15 May 3 Things Every Leader Must Do

Consume this content from a position of how you lead.

So what I encourage you as the listeners to do is to consume this content from a position of how you lead, whether you’re looking to lead…and what you’re working on quite frankly, whether you’re looking to work on leading yourself or you are a leader in a department, a business, an organization, a Bible study, whatever, listen to how these messages can apply to you and what you’re currently working on for yourself in your leadership journey and what environment you’re leading in, because this stuff quite frankly applies to your families as well.  So we look to build our message around a universal leadership component and teaching so we can grow in all areas of our leadership journey.

So we’re talking today about leaders priorities.  What is a leader’s priorities?  And then we have a subtitle that says Three Things Every Leader Must Do, so we’re going to kind of chunk it down to the three things that every leader must do that really defines what a leader’s priorities are.

So like everything else that we focus on we always look to understand the definition behind the word or the focal point, and so today’s word is about priorities, and so the definition of priorities is ‘something that supersedes everything else.’  You see what we come to understand about life, business, and definitely in leadership, there’s always more to do than really what we have time available, whether you’re one of those that never seems to have time for things or you just recognize the fact that you only have 24 hours in a day you need to eat, sleep, get stuff done, take care of the family, and you only have an allocated amount of time available to you, whether you’re leading a charitable organization, your business, your family, whatever the case may be, we all have an allocation of time that we’re restricted to.  And so what we come to understand is that if we have this much time and this much to do then how do we become effective?  How do we achieve outcomes, results, and this proverbial success that we talk about and overuse?  And really what it becomes is about focusing on priorities, focusing on the critical and vital tasks that supersede everything else. Why?  Because there’s always more to do than time allocated.  And if there’s more to do than time allocated then what it becomes is a critical focus on the tasks that supersede everything else.

What needs to be done?

So now that we have the understanding about priorities and the definition is something, an activity, an action, a focus that supersedes everything else, what we need to understand is what is everything that needs to be done?  And so we typically call that a to-do list, and I believe to-do lists are the focal point of average people.  

Now I’m not here to insult anyone, if you’re to-do list person I’m not calling you average but what I am telling you is you’re going to get stuck in average because successful people don’t focus on to-do lists, they focus on the have-to-do list, and the have-to-do list are your priorities, the elements of all the stuff that needs to get done because in there somewhere is things that are more important, that supersede everything else.  And so what I tell people whether we’re teaching or goal planning workshop or teaching on leadership, I believe every outcome, result or success or goal, whatever you want to label it, has three to five critical tasks, and inside those critical tasks there’s one that’s vital.  So we look at critical and vital tasks and in essence those become our priorities because they’re vital to mission accomplishment and they’re critical to mission accomplishment and therefore I believe they supersede everything else.  That whole to-do list, yeah inside there is three to five critical tasks and inside those three to five there’s one that is the most important.  And so now that we laid that foundation let’s build upon that and understand what every leader must do.  

The first one is leaders help their people prioritize their priorities. So what does that mean?  It means that we start with this overwhelm of everything that needs to get done.  You see overwhelm is nothing more than the brain’s response to too much stimuli, it doesn’t know how to process it. So if your brain can only process this much and you’re giving it this much it’s going to be overwhelmed.  So when you find yourself overwhelmed understand something that you’re dealing with this much and there’s a process that we call “chunking down,” and what we need to do is we need to chunk it down for the brain to where it can process the stimuli in an appropriate manner.  And what you want to do leaders, when we talk about prioritizing people’s priorities, what that does is it helps them have an awareness and focus on what their priorities are, the tasks that supersede everything else, the things that are critical and vital to their mission, goals, desires, results, the success, achievement, whatever the label you’re creating, you’re helping them create the focus of the chunk down and saying that this is your priorities, and within that here is the prioritization of those priorities.  

See great leaders help their people prioritize their priorities.  

Why?  Because if you don’t then what they tend to do is they give everything equal priority, they give everything equal importance, equal focus, the to-do list has the same level of importance as the critical and vital tasks, cause remember we said inside that whole to-do list there are critical and vital tasks. They tend to give equal importance to dropping their dry cleaning off at the dry cleaners as it is the tasks that are going to make them money, and in reality in your day those do not have equal importance.  Depending on where you’re at in your life and in your business or the organization, within those have to do…or those to-do lists there are things that are clearly more important to mission accomplishment than having to get done just for the sake of getting done.  

You see there’s a great book out there, The Four Disciplines of Execution where they talk about the whirlwind of life, it’s that to-do list stuff that just creates a whirlwind of life that we have to do, or that we do just to get through the day but it doesn’t move us forward.  So what we understand is we have to chunk it down, this overwhelming list of to-do stuff, to have-to-do, which is to critical and vital tasks which becomes our priorities that the activities that supersede everything else.  

So the first thing that every leader must do to be a great leader is they help their people prioritize their priorities, we identify everything that needs to get done where we identify the three to five critical tasks which become our priority, and then we prioritize them, because even if there’s five they all still don’t have equal priority because one of them is vital.  One of them, meaning it’s so vital that if we don’t do the other four, this one, as long as it gets done is going to still make an impact in the role, the business, the organization, et cetera.

The second thing great leaders do that they must do when leading others and themselves is they discern what needs to be done first.  And so we may look at that as the vital task but we have to understand that every single day in order to accomplish your mission, in order to be able to get the achievement, the results, the outcomes, the success that we’re looking for, there’s something that we must do first, it’s typically that vital task but not always.  And what that looks like is once we identify our priorities we then need to understand the critical and vital tasks, we need to understand what that vital task is, and we need to make sure that that gets done first.

Leaders your job, you want to be a great leader?  

You must make sure your people understand what needs to get done first so that when the whirlwind of crap comes at us in the morning, because there’s a force that’s trying to take you away from you being successful, whatever you believe in whether you believe in spirituality, there’s God and Satan; if you believe in the Eastern Asian culture, there’s Ying and Yang; for every good there’s an equal and opposite bad; there’s a force that’s going to try and pull you away from that success. It’s going to come at you, it’s a flat tire, it’s your kid sick, it’s you sick, you didn’t get enough sleep last night, there’s traffic, your mocha choca latte wasn’t made with three shots of Espresso like you wanted, someone just pissed you off, whatever the case may be, those are the distractions, because distraction is the key ingredient, the devil uses that tool, that ingredient to pull you off of your ability to be successful.  It’s going to happen, it’s going to come at you whether it’s today, every day, or throughout the course of your twelve months of your plan something’s going to come at you to try and pull you away from that success.  So we need to understand what is vital and it needs to be done first so that when the distractions show up at least that vital task was done.  Or when we look to get our day started and focused on that vital task we understand that when the distraction, the BS shows up we have a choice, and I say, I always say… tell people life is choice, your choices will define your decisions and your decisions will define your destiny.  Do I choose dealing with the crap that has a lesser priority or do I choose dealing with the vital priority?   

Do we choose to focus on the vital priority that’s going to set the stage for the day, set the very foundation?  Cause if I get that done then dealing with the crap is okay because I know I got that vital task done.

So first one is… first thing every great leader must do, we must prioritize our people’s priorities, take them from the have-to-do to the three to five critical tasks and then prioritize those tasks for them.  

Then we help them, the second thing is we help them understand exactly what must be done first, and then we take it to the next level within that which is we put it in their calendar or we hold them accountable for putting it in their calendar.  See being aware of it needs to be done first and it being in your calendar are two different things, create awareness around it and then hold them accountable to put it in their calendar because I believe if it’s in your calendar you’re significantly increasing your chances of it actually getting done.  And then you have to understand what those distractions are and attempt to work with your people to remove all the distractions.

And so the third priority that every leader must do in order to be a great leader is they themselves must become passionate about what’s most important for them, it’s that role model, it’s that lead thyself level-two leadership that we talk about in our six levels of leadership that we coach and teach to.  You see you can’t ask people to do something…here’s my belief system as a leader, you cannot ask people to do something you’re not willing to do.  You can’t ask your people to master their priorities when you yourself are not passionate about mastering your own, because I believe that what we become passionate about and so do our people, it starts to kind of tie into that adage of speed of the leader, speed of the pack.  The heart of the leader is the heart of the pack.  What you’re passionate about, so are they.  

If you’re passionate about mastering priorities you’re increasing your people’s chances of doing the same because you’re their leader and they want to follow you.  If you give them a reason not to do their priorities because you yourself are not doing them they’ll use that excuse, and quite frankly when you try to hold them accountable to their priorities they’re going to punk you out and say “Well come on leader… come on coach…come on team lead you’re not doing yourself, why should I do it?”

Don’t be that leader that is one of those, “Don’t listen to what I do, don’t do what I do.”  Be that leader that shows people the model by which they need to follow, be the vehicle to their success through your conversations and your actions.

The passion of the leader will show up in the organization and those that follow.  If you’re passionate about your people your people will be passionate about each other, you’ll create actual teamwork as opposed to individuals.  When people ask me, “Chris how do I get… how do we build my team to be cohesive where we actually live out the acronym Together Everyone Achieves More, and we don’t just have a bunch of individuals where it just becomes a group?”  
Well the answer to that is become passion about your people, because when you become passion about your people your people become passionate about each other.

Gandhi says, “Be the change you want to see in the world today.”  

There’s that saying out there,  “Be, do, have.  Who do I need to be in order to do things I need to do, to have what it is I want to have?”  The same thing in leadership.

So real quickly to review the three priorities of a leader is you must help your people prioritize their priorities.   Second, you must discern what needs to be done first.  And the one piece that I missed, I’ll throw it in now, and it’s more along the lines of the distractions.  We must discern what needs to be done first and what must not be done at all.  Not so much not done at all but where our focus needs to go and what we need to push to the side until we get our critical and vital and priorities done.  Like if this one task needs to be done first then you sure as hell should not be at Starbucks chit-chatting with people; you sure as hell not be finding a reason why you need to be on social media; you sure as hell shouldn’t be finding a reason to go get distracted because you know this must be done first.  So help people prioritize their priorities, discern what needs to be done first and what doesn’t need to be done at all during that period of time of time blocks priorities.  And the third is become passionate about your own priorities.

About the author:

Over the course of 8 years, Christopher Hart went from an enlisted Private First Class to a Commissioned Officer-Captain. In 2005, Christopher chose to move on from his military career to focus on starting a family and embarking in the world of entrepreneurship. Christopher’s passion is now working to help others be the BEST version of themselves and helping them Lead others to the same!

To learn more about Christopher Hart or to get in touch with him regarding a coaching program you can email him at Chris@TransformingLivesCoaching.com